Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller

by Guðberger Bergsson

  Now it is necessary to show self-control. I take a clipping off the table and run my eyes over its columns. My vision stops with hydraulic brakes of tears as my eyes carefully read the newspaper account of the girl in England with a congenital hole in the heart. Blood flows unsystematically free from the shackles of her body’s blood vessels, it swells within their cylindrical bodies, it subsides sometimes twice a day. The refectory examines the picture of the girl from all sides and the Board, sighing, circulates the newspaper, sighing. The most famous experts in the girl’s country, Great Britain, study her and propose a ban on her exposure to anything that can make her pregnant, even the thought of a man. The little lamb escapes this medical prohibition all the way to Italy; at the beach she meets a young, handsome Italian. The morning papers publish the news: Young English Girl with a Hole in Her Heart Gets to Know an Italian. The Board is breathless over the story. Hopefully the couple have some sense, says Dísa. Miss Gerður moans: At the very least they should take precautions. The Italian gets her pregnant. He agrees to bring her home into his house through its dirty kitchen door. No-no, the Italian does right by his impulses, nurtures her in a Christian and Catholic way. Girl with Congenital Hole in Heart Not Expected to Survive. We had no option, says the prospective mother to the journalist, weeping with happiness. The refectory gapes. Now I’m excited. They must flush the human out, it should not be injured. Miss Gerður gets a twitch in her jaw and speaks fanatically about the responsibilities of life itself and the nature of sex and how god is lenient when the time comes. I am a great believer in destiny, she says in that particular Nordic, proud manner and adds that if the girl is going die then she will die, period; if fate intends her to live, then she will live. It’s that simple. The young miss makes a point of keeping her clumsy spinsterhood in tight reins via a liberal babble about understanding man’s weakness. I feel nothing is wrong, I’m just excited to see and find out. Over the nine months the young miss’s sad eyes meander through the newspapers, but nowhere is there a word about the girl with a hole in the heart. Maybe, it was not the heart, but the heartNERVES or heartCHAMBER, she says. The case has dried up, maybe they destroyed the fetus with gamma rays or injected her with new marrow. So the news comes as a shock: Girl with a Hole in Her Heart Gives Birth to a Healthy Baby Boy with Help of Leading Experts at St. James Hospital in London. The birth went well. No, this is definitely propaganda from the Holy See, laughs Miss Gerður, or the Italian Tourist Board. No one can tell me that a woman with an open hole in her heart can bring a child into the world. The birth is pure propaganda. The young miss sits with a sulky expression over the newspaper alone in the refectory over an extra coffee. She rambles on with a blurry expression and forgets about the girl. Miss Gerður sitting alone at a big long table, nothing important in the papers. Only ads for rising fish prices, new volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, shrinking glaciers. Then the birth of a child without a navel in Holland and Kennedy is elected president. I throw the clippings away from me. Spring comes and summer. The sky is like a dirty milk bottle. Evening. Days. Kennedy. The sun rages on grassy areas and tries to beat some green straw from them once the frost has left the ground. No dice. The grass areas reveal no color, waking after a yellow winter. The trees shoot out buds and the buds die after a few days. Everywhere children are being born without arms. “It pays to kill a president.” The grass areas continue as earth beds. A loon choir in Akureyri sings:

  nine power plants newly opened in the country

  but the nation undermines its center of gravity

  sluggards sit firmly in the forefront

  no one suspects where industry is headed

  things CANNOT CONTINUE ANY LONGER

  I discover a great truth. I will discuss it later. In a miraculous way I found the essence of existence. I know what it is, but I will not let anyone have access to it. I am not so stupid. Great, dark forces are hidden within the figure that is Tómas

  look at me

  see icicle fingers

  freckled scab bald

  the swelled belly

  genitals miserly soft between the legs

  no one suspects what lies under a coat. (I lie coat-clad in my lair. I lie under a blanket wearing a coat and shoes and overshoes)where was I goingnot the least trace of thought should survive me on this side of the graveeverything I say and have said is done in order to give a false impression of myselfeverything Tómas knows he guesseswhen Tómas rests under the green turf many yarns will have been lost in death’s ocean(Now he is entirely carried to the grave, this adored and famous storyteller has run his course. A full bowl of water lies pulverized in the earth under our feet, this earthen vessel of life, Tómas Jónsson, never recoverable waterproof from the earth. We mourn him, we drink milk to him, Tómas, the absolute opposite of a wandering rabble)or is he just a constantly jabbering delegate not saying a word of sense and in this respect comparable to Sigurður or whatever he is calledI hardly care to remember him by name. Someone asks me, I hum after an improbable pause: Sigurður, who is that. I never heard the man mentioned; I do not know any Sigurður. And I walk away, somewhat stiff-backed; I work my fingers like mad on the calculator for two hours continuously. I cough and clear my throat. Or I complain of a runny nose and gobs of spit: Your sputum is nothing, you should see mine, these meadow-colored globs. Just since this morning I have gone through two handkerchiefs. The third will soon be covered in these small globules. Your cold is still in your head and nose. I am sure all your sinuses are full. Next it will go into your lungs and I am still clearing my chest since the flu. With this cold, I set a new spit record. Look at this, it came from my last illness. It’s nothing compared to this morning. That was such substantial SPIT. Yes, I see it. I have broken the icelandic spit record. You never get such purple spit from your throat. I always get that. I walk away from people who want to stop me on the street to talk about their colds and their mucus or ask for the nearest pharmacy. I have an inalienable right to avoid people. Now I’m going to tell just one story before I stop. I’m no Anton Pavilits Antonovits who was buttoned into prison December 25 1932, alleged to have refused to give his sister Admotova Antonova his address. I believe he let her know the house number but kept mum about the street name. Ingenious. Some valid reason as a basis for the refusal. But this Admotova was irresponsible enough to accuse her brother of knowingly knowing the truth about Stalin. That’ll come up later. My memory has undergone a pleasing regression lately. Yes, one gets older and one’s memory develops autonomy. Young people’s memory is largely dependent on others, always bound to specific subjects. Nowadays I remember something as a glimpse then forget it immediately but it shows up later, totally of its own accord, independent of time and place. I know it well. But if I want to remember something I summon my unconscious to inquire, she goes on the prowl, gets employed in eclectic tasks, and returns the results when she is in the mood to finish the research. I know that ignorant people call it confusion, but this is actually exactly what it is to be unconfused. I have no doubts about my sedulous unconscious. Here comes a crone holding a newspaper article. So. A man is full of newspaper articles and radio news. Our heads are full of all kinds of characters, large and small, and countless wavelengths. Admotova’s legal hearing in Moscow draw the attention of the free world. A woman named Admotova Antonova had rented one square meter under the chandelier of her brother’s new three-square-meter apartment on Slava Street. These apartments they shared with Anton’s wife, their son, and the furry dog Gontsa. And they all subsisted on one cabbage soup and bean dish a day. No part of the house was heated; there were no creature comforts, no running water. NOTHING. The house was gray both inside and outside, dark and bleak as a Russian winter sky, windy like the Kola Peninsula. They (the couple) slept together in a hammock, Admotova on the floor, and their son under the dog (imagine that translating over here, offering it to some sixteen-year-old, some handsome icelandic teenager who sleeps under a Dralon® duvet, no it would not translate THANK YOU very much
). A deathly cold prevailed in the Soviet house though the residents attempted ineffectively to warm themselves with a Russian carping and shaming, with fights, vodka, and sex. Twenty years of the USSR had this one effect: making people themselves quasi-animals. But to prevent housing congestion, the government sent the police at night to disappear people without a trace. Russians call it night cleaning; we call it political purging. The house was never cleaned in the other sense; they did not own any cleaning implements except the weapons the secret police brought at night. But the human creature is persistent in the face of suffering and people formed the only organization that was free, collaborating to rent nightly space for three kopeks per week, shared equally among all, even the dog; they earned a living through theft. It was always thought the wisest dogs in Moscow lived around the Kremlin, thieving and snooping for bones in trash cans. They stole the bones for their masters. Specially trained dogs went for high prices on the Moscow black market in the years 1925-1937. It was possible to buy dogs specially trained to steal everything from sewing needles in locked apartments on the fifth floor to dogs able to carry out bank robberies and car theft (now these dogs are the cornerstones of the famous Russian circus; they have been retrained and their talents directed in new ways for the benefit of the nation). But this dog’s life was not without risk. The authorities took precautionary measures. For example, dogs faced mortal danger if they pissed on the street lights, and foreign correspondents were often witness to little waggish dogs barely lifting one of their hind legs as they noisily ate, wearing a sly expression like small dogs are wont to, and sending a weak stream an adequate distance away from the post. On the other hand, up jogs a large, single-mined dog, right to the light post, sending a huge jet from under the proximate hind leg in contravention of the fact that the authorities had wired electricity to the street lights, so the dog ended up burned to ashes by the electric shock as the electric current streamed through the wires on the post and from the post along the spray to the dog. There was no reason for that to continue. Animal lovers hit upon the plan of erecting small sticks in gardens for dogs and strays to urinate on. The police tried to prevent this, of course. Over time, sticks in a garden became a sign of national disloyalty. Nevertheless, a piss stick resistance movement spread throughout Russia and from there comes the saying, Piss sticks in the garden is a political concern, which Kruschev used a lot—the Russians, as is well known, do not speak in poetry like us, but rather in proverbs. Well, yes. During the darkest years of Stalin’s reign, colorful fountain chamber pots for both dogs and humans were much in vogue. They took their name from their likeness to drinking fountains. They were identical except that the arc of water ran in the opposite direction from a drinking fountain, and then automatically from the pot’s basin into the pillar that held it; the pot could be raised or lowered depending on the size of the one relieving himself. If the bowl was not in use one could remove it from the pillar and the pot thus turned into a decorative cudgel ornamented on the outside with bunches of grapes. All hand-painted, varnished, and greatly splendid. In Russia, people always piss behind the floral column, the proverb goes. And in the morning they swapped places, pouring from the cudgel into the common toilets on Slava Street (and as a rule always urinated before going to bed). They often had to stand waiting in a line for hours together. (Do not think that electricity had been run through the street lights only to kill dogs, but also wretches and drunks, which Russia crawled with, to stop the ugly habit they had of leaning their shoulder on the lights, a caricature with pocketed hands and a cigarette sagging idly free from their mouths, worn deerhunter on head, big toe poking from shoe, clothes crumpled around a sorely-used body.) While people loitered in the L-shaped queues prescribed after the death of Lenin (L for Lenin), dressed warmly in tattered smocks in winter, the pot’s bottom often froze, and the State would pluck from the poor an additional kopek as a fee for the chamber pot. Well. In the middle of the floor, Anton demarcated with white lines a square meter, which he leased Admotova. He demarcated her space there so the couple could use the wall to sit in the evening after returning from the enslavement camp. Admotova could never step over the line; she had to jump from the doorway over to her box and sit directly on the cold floor until sleep overcame her. Thence foreign reporters would seek her at all times until the idea was hit on to string a hammock across the room’s walls, then she murmured to herself: now the time has come and Babushka leans on her right ear. She slept in contempt of her brother and sister-in-law mating in her sight, and the son and the dog, against the wall. She said, sighing heavily: Things fare badly for Mother Russia if a couple do not have a bearskin pelt to mate under. Hope fares poorly when some are dogs and cats and drink tea, and others are floor lurkers, and the world is divided into two hostile entities. (Admotova was the first person in history to define the world as two hostile entities.) And she sorely envied the couple for the polished-copper teakettle in one corner. Facing this was a fixture covered with an old bearskin pelt (see, they were not completely broke; they had a bearskin; one’s thoughts can often be insolent and totally wrong). Behind the pelt Anton kept his toothbrush in a birdcage hanging from four-inch nails on the wall. It is certainly a global phenomenon for a tenant to steal a toothbrush from the householder if it is lying in public view. My experience is not unique. That’s how a new toothbrush of mine was ruined, once. Unknowingly, I did not bring it to my room, but left it in the bathroom one morning and in the evening when I entered heedlessly I saw it lying on a glass shelf; as I slid my finger on the bristles I felt that they were wet. Everything being normal, they would have dried during the day IS THAT NOT SO. If I attempted to use someone else’s toothbrush I would know to dry the bristles on the radiator or I would sneak it immediately after the owner, brushing my teeth quickly and leaving it in exactly the same place, so no one knew whether it was wet from me or him. Anton hit on the same idea, but differently, because he poured caustic soda solution on the bristles (tenants also sneak the householder’s soap, razor, perfumes, comb, and toilet paper if the roll is loose, for example on the cistern). Do not blame me if some things are getting mixed together in my memory. I waited for her, awake, as she slunk into the toilet. Admotova snuck behind the pelt and Anton heard it with his ears, only pretending to sleep, a little rustle and movement in the dark. Night on the rainy mountains. She returned whining almost immediately from under the pelt, groaning from the smart and holding frostbitten fingers to a mouth sick from scurvy and Vitamin C deficiency. One of Anton’s eyes witnessed this in the gleam from the street lights. The other eye was pressed to the net in the hammock all night, which faced down. The first eye stared straight up in the sky and could afford to give up the luxury of sleep. During sleep a man’s nose sleeps, the ears only slightly. Sunday. Admotova with her singed burnt mouth, her jaw leading me to think of an uncouth word choice. As I jerked into the hall the hundred-kilogram woman peered sideways at me, eyes burning with fury, enraged, a contrarian with her kids. The caustic soda ruined the bristles. Now I appreciate that soda can immediately clean a brush. Sometimes a solution arrives too late from the unconscious. She did not boldly sneak my toothbrush any more, though I left it deliberately under the mirror. She perhaps sniffed at it; I do not know. For many days, she had a fiery mouth. And though she colored her lips one could see sores flowing out the corners of her mouth. She saw the trick in the quadrangular open kitchen door. The couple rejoiced that she (who?) died in a snowstorm at the corner of Lermontov Street while Anton waited in a long L-shaped queue in Red Square. He visited the Tomb every free moment, fearing that otherwise he would lose the apartment. And when he stepped into the vault, who should be sitting on the marble bench except Admotova, who was observing the trials of her body. She looked up, saw Anton and shouted: Where do you live now, you pig, comrade brother Anton. (This probably happened long after the death of Stalin, when the S-shaped queues were prescribed in all photographs.) That said, Admotova lived at full tilt, working during the day cleaning
streets and removing snow. After night fell she sought refuge in the tomb, which was well heated although a coal shortage prevailed everywhere in the state of happiness of communism. Admotova had a devilish foresight and cunning; in winter she made frequent visits, which she hinted were the result of a love for their glass-coffined leader (would anyone be opposed to having Jón Sigurðursson in a glass coffin or Jesus). No guard dared shoo her off and even announced her presence to awake the attention of the masses who hovered around Red Square half frozen in the hope of some residual heat from the Kremlin’s doors and windows. Admotova was not one to mourn when others froze to death. She felt it was cold or laziness in snow shoveling, she muttered, mouthing: Now old Babushka is less cold in the c-l-a-w and she immediately and without preface set down her spade and pick and headed toward the tomb. There she was seen shoveling snow, this Russian national character, in all Western newspaper photographs—to the right of the stairs. Where does Comrade Admotova mean to idle her time away, the foreman asked. The mausoleum, she replied and in a calm manner let light flicker the idealistic fire of Leninist Marxism. If you are cold you will work yourself warm, said the foreman obstinately, there is plenty of snow here. I am not troubled by cold, said Admotova, bridling. The foreman was stricken with fear by the answer and remembered that Russians MAY NOT be cold under the USSR; it was forbidden. But he feared the precedent Admotova could spread among the ragged rabble who worked along Skálholt. He was silent and dared not declare his hostility at her trips and her labor treachery. It could have cost him a visit to Siberia. Admotova got to sit in the tomb daily calculating pay rates and overtime wages and respect for the leader’s face, constantly knitting and spinning, her work never set down. It was a great delight to see her wool-work. Sometimes she practiced writing her name and would give it one of the foreign delegations. Her handwriting was fantastic, she managed so well reversing R-to-Я. By and by she rose stiffly from the bench and stroked pro forma the dust off the coffin and polished its silver braces. She of course immediately recognized Anton, who moved slowly in a line parallel with the coffin dressed in a black smock and with wrapped legs. There was no doubt that he had emerged from a photograph of Red Square in winter, but not a photo in a USSR paper. I do not recognize you, he said, you are from a totally different Soviet paper than me. And a fight broke out there. Don’t crowd the coffin! shouted the watchmen, who overpowered Anton and carried him into police station no. 139 on Gorky Street. At the trial, staged for the benefit of foreign correspondents, Anton offered the mitigating circumstances that his eyes had been frozen and therefore could not have focused on Admotova. She appeared on his retina as a cubist reflection, he said. Nothing could be seen except the broad struggle of light and shadow on the surface. The mouth lies, howled Admotova, “the eye is the part of the body that is most resistant to cold; really has no one felt cold behind the eyelids,” says Aristotle, and Leninist Marxism has never contradicted his theory. The theory is right. The case was sent to the Ideology Studies Council, which agreed with Aristotle’s theory. And Admotova was afterward recognized as a frequent guest of the tomb so that opinion fell in her favor and she claimed the toothbrush in the bird cage as a documentable possession of hers along with the wall space and the tea kettle. Authorities and protesters boasted of victory in one of the most notorious trials ever, and their echoes came to iceland and “crystallized” as a legend that presented Admotova as a precedent liable to trigger an uprising among shoveling women. The party made a secret agreement in which she would come nowhere near shovel and spade, or tomb, either. Okey-doke, Admotova, dear, they said. You just lie quietly at home during the day and sleep and drink tea on full salary; the city will pay. A woman, Grevilovska (the name is related to the word “grefill,” which means both a pick and the devil, two things that merged in this woman, a woman who shoveled with an icepick and who had a devil inside her mind), found out about Admotova’s secret; Moscow is a city with eared walls, just like any other that considers itself closed-off and monitored and ruled by police (gossip can spread from Moscow to Kiev and thence to Pacific coasts via serving girls in just five days) and it was known Grevilovska meant to take advantage of the rumors’ speed and reach the tomb unseen, but when the officers saw her they let ammonia into the heat pipes and connected the refrigeration machine and Grevilovska froze to death on the marble bench. And then a message was released: that Lenin’s embalming fluid was best preserved in hellish cold. Now the temperature in the tomb is at freezing point. Nothing thrives there except cold bacteria. In the opinion of the icelandic delegation, the Asian influenza virus originated there. But the truth about the mummy is concealed from many men, even the Russians, which is that the glass coffin does not store the actual body of Lenin, but a detailed simulation produced by Tussaud’s Waxworks in London. Everyone knows that famine and devaluation prevailed in the Soviet Union when Lenin died, the exchange rate dropped, and to solve the devaluation, a proposal was made by economists at a secret meeting to sell the true body of Lenin (who had five substitutes so it was uncertain whether the real Lenin died, since the substitutes were brainwashed, blindfolded and placed together in a locked blacked-out cabin, so that when they emerged no one knew any longer whether he was the real Lenin or not). An American collector bought the carcass with substantial capital, on condition that he did not display the corpse openly until a century had passed from the leader’s death. While Tussaud’s analysts were in Moscow, Stalin took the opportunity and also had a form made in wax (all pictures taken indoors are not of him but of his likeness). Here in iceland he was never thought to have died a natural death, but a waxwork death. It is said that the real Stalin fled his own tyranny to Peru and now cultivates a garden. After the trial, Anton was sentenced to sit in the center of the floor in a chalk triangle and obliged to hold his wife in his arms as she held their son in her arms as their son held the dog Gontsa in his arms and the dog held his paw to the chandelier, condemned to watch Admotova treat herself to hot tea. (There are legends at the refectory that Stalin gave Roosevelt Lenin’s actual body at the Yalta conference, a symbol of Soviet friendship. But that is of course purely a Tall Story.)